Daresalam

Daresalam (English: "Let There Be Peace") is a 2000 dramatic film by Chadian director Issa Serge Coelo. It has been considered one of the very few recent African films that has treated the theme of the internecine conflicts that have ravaged the African continent since independence. While set in a fictional African country called Daresalam, it reflects the civil war that ravaged Chad during the 1960s and 1970s.

Synopsis

The film takes place in a fictional central African country (called Daresalam, "the Land of Peace" in Arabic) amidst a civil war. It features as main characters two young friends, Koni (Haikal Zakaria) and Djimi (Abdoulaye Ahmat), whose peaceful existence is interrupted when the central government irrupts in their village harassing them and browbeating the villagers into paying new taxes to help fight the civil war.

A heated discussion ensues, which degenerates, causing the death of a government official, which causes in retaliation the burning of the village and the massacre of its inhabitants. Koni and Djimi now pass with others to the rebellion, but the rebels eventually split, with Djimi remaining with the hardliners and Koni going instead with a faction which supports compromise with the government, thus estranging the two friends. Koni will later be executed in a coup, while Djimi will leave the rebels and return to his home village with a war widow and a sewing machine left to him by a fallen combatant, with which he can attempt to start a new life for himself and his family.